


the space between

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [18]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Absence, Angst, F/M, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age II, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: After the Chantry, Kirkwall's changed in many ways.  Despite the rubble in the streets and the chaos in the city, the greatest change for Varric is the absence of a single person.





	the space between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [royalwisteria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalwisteria/gifts).



For the first several weeks after the Chantry -- that was how people started referring to it, _before_ and _after_ the Chantry shattered -- Varric couldn’t get the smell out of his nose. 

Kirkwall had never been a place known for its genteel bouquet, that was true.  Too much the smell of docks and fish work, not to mention the particular sewer stink of chokedamp rising up from Darktown.  Still, though, somehow it had all mixed together with the occasional clear breeze or blooming olive tree to come up with something that had always meant _home_ to him.

Now the city stank of _sela petrae_ and drakestone, of blood and mortar, of bodies rotting in the summer air before they could be burned.  It didn’t matter if he stood in Hightown or on the narrow quays, he still got it, strong and thick: the smell of desperation.

Varric frowned, kicking aside a chunk of loose tile from some rich person’s estate.  This building had survived just fine, aside from sandstone dust dirtying the windows.  One quarter over, though, and Bartrand’s home had had its windows blown clear out. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.

He raised his head as he entered one of Hightown’s squares, his feet carrying him on this path through force of habit. Carefully, he allowed himself a look at the familiar red banners of the Hawke estate.  Bodahn and Orana still kept the manor, and Sandal with them. There were no Hawkes in the Hawke estate, though. Not anymore.

Varric made sure Bodahn and Orana were paid just the same regardless; it was one of the few things they’d managed to talk about before she left.  Funny. Fleeing for her life, and all she could do was think about other people.

He’d almost headed to Hawke’s the morning after, barely able to walk after the battle through the city, even with Anders’ healing.  Who else would he talk about this shit with but Hawke? He’d gotten all the way through the Lowtown market and up the mezzanine terrace streets before he remembered that Hawke was gone.

His mouth thinned into a bitter line, his stomach twisting as he remembered.  She’d been beautiful the day it happened, ever as always, raven hair plastered with sweat to her forehead beneath her red hood.  The Champion of Kirkwall was bloodied, bruised, but she was alive, and that much was enough. He’d thought maybe they could get things back the way they used to be, with Meredith and Orsino gone, the fight finished.  Stupid of him, honestly.

They’d been sitting on broken stones, weakly laughing in exhaustion and catching their breath, when they saw her.  The Chantry messenger had cut a pitiful figure, pale with big eyes and her hands trembling on the decree. The way she spoke Hawke’s name had jangled in the looming silence of the gallows.

“We’ll run,” said Hawke, voice ragged.

“We?” Varric had asked.

“Anders can’t stay either, not after this.”  Blondie’s face was pallid, looking more dead than alive, his eyes shuttered.  Hawke shot him a desperate look, then turned to Varric. “But you -- you’ll be fine, Varric, and Kirkwall will need you and Aveline --”

Varric shook his head, willing himself to come out of his reverie.  He didn’t want to think of what had come next. How Varric had nearly begged Hawke to stay, tears in his eyes, in hers.  Varric didn’t want to remember the feeling of his arms around her, nor the way it felt when she shakily pulled away.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried through Hightown, careful to keep his head down as he passed Hawke’s empty estate.  No sense winding himself up to miss her even more than usual.

Varric swallowed, wrinkling his nose.  Powdered drakestone again, the scent biting and mineral.  He wove through piles of rubble, brushing shoulders with Lowtown workers struggling to clear the ash-cloaked avenue, and made his way onwards.  Aveline wanted to talk, and with Hawke and Anders gone, and Fenris hunting slavers, and Isabela seeking a new ship, company was in short supply.  Without Hawke, who were they to each other?

He climbed the stairs to the Viscount’s Way, trying to find something positive about the situation.  

He cracked a grin he didn’t feel.  At least the air in the guards’ quarters would smell a little cleaner.  

 

***

 

Hawke sat in a grimy inn in Hercinia, resolutely stirring her spoon through a weak soup of seaweed, a few bay shrimp, and not much else.  It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it was the only thing the small inn had on offer. She dropped her small hard roll into the soup and spooned the thin broth over it, then took a bite of squishy bread and broth.  It was something, at least.

She missed Orana’s pleasant “Good morning” and the Tevene-style pastries she would bake specially once a week, rich with spicy cinnamon.  She missed her own chair and table, and not this rickety table seating ten surly fisherfolk. She missed her hard-won home. She missed Kirkwall.

A fisherwoman with broad shoulders bumped into her as she sat down, and Hawke’s soup bowl jittered, spilling lukewarm broth onto the wooden table.  “D’you think adding wood to it would improve the flavor?” Hawke asked.

The woman looked at her in staid disbelief, blinking slowly.  “What?”

Hawke swallowed, abashed, and returned to her rickety bowl.  “Never mind,” she muttered, quietly enough that the woman didn’t hear.  “I take it folk here aren’t morning people.”

For a moment she smiled despite herself, Varric coming to mind.  Of all her friends, he was the one who was most decidedly not a morning person. Memories of him emerging blearily from a tent on the Wounded Coast, hair wildly mussed, cursing a blue storm, made her stifle a chuckle.  How she missed him!

She indulged herself, imaging him beside her, making snide comments about the shitty breakfast and the crap decor and how it felt like he was right at home in the Hanged Man.  If only things had been different. Maker’s breath, it’d be good to have him here….

But she looked around the inn, and saw the chairs were all the same height, far too low for a dwarf to sit in and still see above the table.  Hercinia was almost entirely a human town, no alienage to speak of and few merchant dwarves, and Hawke frowned into her bowl of soup. If Varric tried to join her on the long wooden bench, the table would hit at his nose height, which struck her as unfair and demeaning.  It wasn’t a good place for a dwarf.

It wasn’t a good place for her, either, if she was honest, but what would be the point of thinking like that?

Hawke brushed at her eyes, wiping them with the pad of her thumb.  She wished she could write home, let the others know she was all right, but not yet.  Not until she left the Marches. Antiva, maybe, or Rivain; they might be better places for a fugitive.

Her eyes stung, and she wiped at them again.  “I don’t even like shrimp,” she said to nobody in particular.

The fisherwoman turned to her, weather-chapped face wrinkled in confusion.  “Well, you don’t have to eat them,” she said.

“I --” Hawke blinked up at the taller woman, frowning.  “Well, I know that,” she said resignedly. She looked back down at her soup, and stabbed her sodden roll until it disintegrated, bits of soaked bread floating in the thin oily broth and bumping into small overdone shrimp.  She lifted the bowl to her mouth and slurped down the whole sorry thing, feeling sick.

She’d never thought she would miss the Hanged Man’s creamy fish chowder.  She tried to smile at the ludicrousness of the thought, and made a mental note to tell Varric the next time she saw him.

There _will_ be a next time, she told herself sternly.   _There has to be._

The alternative could go fuck itself.

 

***

 

Varric settled in to his desk, a mug of ale at his elbow and pen and ink at hand.  He sighed, rubbing his chin, exhausted from the day’s efforts.

Kirkwall was slowly, slowly coming out of its fugue.  No one had heard from Hawke or Anders since it happened, and the Chantry messengers had slowly disappeared, empty-handed.  The city began to recover in their absence.

Hard work helped, but coin seemed to help more for what it could do: namely, inspire said hard work.  Kirkwallers were a practical people, and everything had its price, even the things that would benefit them all.  The city had its own funds, but more and more often, Varric found himself dipping into his accounts to renovate properties here, pay workers bonuses there.  He tried to tell himself it was simply good business sense, but he suspected that if he looked closely enough, he might find something almost like civic pride lurking deep within him, and that was entirely too disconcerting a concept to handle.

So he let Aveline boss him around when it made sense (and argued for days when it didn’t), and he helped Merrill help the elves in the alienage, and he paid out for things that helped people.  Everyone needed a hobby, right?

 _Writing’s supposed to be your hobby,_ he reminded himself.  He took a drink of ale, grimacing.  

He blinked at the stack of sealed letters piled up before him.  He’d been so busy the past few weeks he’d barely been keeping up on his correspondence.  The only things he’d been writing down were additions to the notes he’d kept over the past several years, memories sleek and stylized.  There was a story there, in Hawke’s easy grin, her pale blue eyes, her whirling blades. All he had to do was shift things, embellish, lead the narrative on the path it was meant to follow.  Maybe it’d get published yet.

Varric kept some parts of Hawke’s story to himself, though.  There were things that would never make a final draft. How her eyes sparkled after a wicked joke.  The scent of the perfume she wore sometimes around town, a buttery vanilla that cut through the Kirkwall fug.  The way she cried on his shoulder after her mother died. How badly he missed her.

Little things like that.

Varric nudged away the sheaths of parchment holding Hawke’s tale, taking a deep breath.  No, he really needed to get to his letters. The last time he ignored more than a few missives from the Merchant’s Guild, he’d woken up to friendly steel at his neck, and he was getting too old for that shit.  

As he suspected, the first few letters were from the Guild.  He jotted off quick replies to each query, heartened by the rapid progress he was making.  He paused, though, on a thin letter in grey vellum. He recognized the seal -- the false seal.  It looked official, but belonged to no known House when subjected to close examination.

Bianca.

He touched the seal with his fingertips, tracing its familiar pattern.  He hadn’t read the last few letters from her. Kept them, just in case, but hadn’t read them.  

He’d written her, months and months ago now -- it felt a lifetime -- that he couldn’t be there any longer.  Not the way she needed him, not the way she wanted him. Hard to carry on with all that cloak-and-dagger when you were in love with somebody else.  

He took another drink of ale.  Of course, he’d failed to mention to Bianca that Hawke had no idea about said feelings.  A small detail, that, and one he’d resigned himself to. It was fine. He was fine.

At least, he was fine before the Chantry.

He pushed aside Bianca’s letter, and moved onto the next.  Three more letters from the Guild, three more tidy replies.  He was pleased to be getting through them so quickly.

Varric hesitated on a particularly thick letter of yellow parchment.  He didn’t recognize the seal, nor the penmanship. He wafted up the scent of the letter in case of concealed poison, but didn’t catch any bitter tang that would have indicated a problem.  Curiously he cracked the seal.

 _Dear Varric, it’s me, your favorite human.  (Hawke, obviously.)_   _Sorry for the disguised handwriting on the address.  Did I fool you? It was rather fun trying to falsify my handwriting.  I’m sure I’ll do better at it next time. I’ve missed you so, did you realize--_

Varric laughed out loud, a laugh that grew jagged at the end, a little too close to a different emotion.  He clapped his hand over his mouth, grinning at the letter and blinking rapidly. “Shit, Hawke,” he said to the empty room.  “It’s good to see you.”

He settled down to read over her letter, exhaustion and ale and Guild business forgotten, and imagined her there beside him.  The space between them, the countless leagues and unvoiced hurts, suddenly shrank to the small distance between his eyes and her words.

That?  He could work with that.

**Author's Note:**

> For royalwisteria!


End file.
